Chapter Twenty
The Carlyle Session
I spent the next six days sleeping, eating, bathing, and staring out the picture window of my new place. I needed a little hibernation. I had a lot to work through in my head.
It wasn’t that hard to let go of Simon, even after all our years together, and all the memories. I felt as if I’d escaped, so I had no intention of unblocking him on my phone, or telling him where I lived. No, letting go of Simon was the easy part. Picturing him in Rachel’s arms helped.
The more complicated part was letting go of the old Chere and finding the new Chere. I spent a lot of time considering what I wanted to do.
Without rent to pay, and Simon’s drug habit to eat up my savings, I’d have enough money to start looking into degree programs. I started reading about local colleges and trade schools that offered scholarships to non-traditional students.
Design. I’d always been interested in design.
Not just because W said he was interested in design, although that was part of it. The main reason was that I wanted to do something creative, and design seemed like a way to be creative and practical at the same time. I’d seen Simon scrounge for years as a painter, a fine artist, and that lifestyle wasn’t for me. I wanted to be a practical artist, and design practical and beautiful things, like the dishware in my new kitchen cabinets or the etched brass drawer pulls in the master bath. I could design wallpaper to cover the white walls, I could design shoes, jewelry, purses. All of these were things I noticed and loved, and things I could create while working for one of the hundreds of design firms in New York City.
And maybe, just maybe, W would respect me more, and start to admire me, and fall in love with me…
No, no, no, no, no.
That was the big complex thing I thought about the most as I stared out the window at the vast city around me. If I stopped escorting, what would happen with me and W? I had to talk to Henry before I started making any plans. My contract forbade me from contacting former clients for one year from termination of service, but Henry was a human being, and maybe W was a special case. He’d paid Henry a lot of money, way more than a typical client, so W might be able to talk Henry into releasing me from my contract so we could still see each other.
But that was assuming W would want to see me outside the agency, that he would want to keep dating me outside our neat, clean, no-strings-attached escort relationship. As I made these plans, and dreamed and schemed, some small voice in my head kept pleading, but Chere, he’s never even told you his name…
I went to meet him at the Carlyle Hotel exactly one week after we’d shared the burger at the Mandarin Oriental. I put on my favorite black dress, made myself pretty because I owed him, and I wanted to make him happy. He met me at the door and he didn’t look happy. He was in one of his moods.
“I want you to wear this,” he said, holding out a leather eye mask like the one I’d originally worn.
Nooo… I’d waited all week to see him, to look at his beautiful gold-blond hair and his muscles, and his scrutinizing eyes. I’d waited all week to drool over his body and experience his delicious violence. I was rested and energized and I wanted to see him, but he put the mask on me anyway, fastening it extra tight.
The ball gag came next, pressed against my lips. This time I did say no, and I stuck out my tongue and tried to back away from him. That earned me a slap, which rattled me enough for him to overcome my resistance and strap it on.
This wasn’t how I’d wanted this session to go, but I knew if I hung in there, I’d be rewarded with orgasms and poetry. Please let me survive whatever he has planned.
I felt his hands on my jaw, and then he wrapped something around my neck. At first I thought it was his belt and I started to panic, but then I realized it was a collar. He buckled it in the back and then yanked at the front of it. I stumbled and moaned behind the gag. A slave collar? That was something new. His mood, his voice, his hands, all of it felt new. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see his expression, and I couldn’t ask how he was feeling.
I heard his pants unzip, detected the rustle of clothing coming off, and then I felt his hands under my dress. He pushed me back on the bed and lifted my skirt. Please, please, kiss me there.
But he didn’t. He took off my panties with an irritated sound—they were so beautiful, those panties—and tugged apart my thighs. Now, please, now, go down on me, you magical pervert.
But no. I felt some sort of leather band or cuff circle each of my upper thighs. He buckled each side with a tiny clink. New, so new. I didn’t understand all this equipment.
“Give me your hands,” he said.
He put cuffs on my wrists too, and then attached each hand to the cuffs on my legs.
“Stand up,” he said, hauling me to my feet.
I tugged at the cuffs, trying to find my balance, but my hands and arms were bound for the moment. I couldn’t move them more than one or two inches from my side. If he pulled me off balance, I’d go flying. If he hurt me, I’d have no way to stop him.
I felt him yank at the front of my dress, over each of my breasts. For some reason, I imagined he was going to put clamps on me over the fabric. Then he pulled tighter. I heard the whisper-soft sound of scissors cutting fabric.
Shit. I squirmed and moaned, but he grabbed my face and told me to be still. He yanked on my bra next, and snip snip snip. He released the fabric and I felt cool air on my nipple. He did the other side next, cutting a hole through my clothes to expose the tip of my breast. Part of me hated him for ruining my beautiful dress but part of me was fascinated by this objectification. I wondered what I looked like, standing there with my stiff tits peeking from the fabric.
I knew what I felt like. I felt vulnerable and scared, and so excited. When I shivered, he twisted a handful of my hair.
“I know,” he said. “I know this makes you horny. You’ll get my cock, I promise. I’m not sure you’ll like where I put it, though.”
I whined, but it wasn’t a real whine, because it felt kind of fun to be this scared. I heard the soft metallic sound of nipple clamps clinking together. Oh, shit, shit, shit, shit. Even when I was turned on, the clamps were torturous.
“Don’t move,” he warned me. “Don’t you dare struggle or back away from me.”
He applied the first clamp, and my whole body tensed at the searing pain. I huffed out breaths and tried not to move. As I stood there, I felt him tinkering with the front of the collar. The chain connecting the nipple clamps was lifted from my skin, and I realized he was threading it through some ring on the collar, probably the same ring he kept yanking to remind me it was there.
“Please, no,” I said through the gag. It sounded like aww aww. I could picture the sadistic smile on his face as he clamped my other nipple. Ow. Shit. My fingers dug into my thighs as I tried to process the pain. I didn’t dare try to pull away, in case I fell down. And of course, every time I moved my neck, the chain made the clamps pull tighter.
“Please,” I said again. Aww. I squirmed and then squealed at the resulting agony in my nipples. I could hear his chuckle through the curse words in my brain.
“You’re a helpless little piece of shit, aren’t you?” I felt his hands on my waist, and heard the scissors again. “You know why I’m cutting up your pretty dress, Chere? Because I can. Because you can’t do anything to stop me.” He cut away the bottom half, up to my waist. When he finished pulling the skirt away, he thrust rough fingers into my pussy. “Right now, I can do anything in the world to you, and you don’t have a say. It’s called slavery. It’s called being my pretty set of holes.”
I went up on my toes, angling my hips, trying to get him to touch my clit. I was so wet and horny, a fact he was happy to exploit.
“You want it bad, don’t you? You want some cock.”
“I want your cock,” I said through the gag. Of course the words were unintelligible, just a garbled series of moans. My nipples were killing me, but I arched to touch him wherever I could.
“No, you’re my toy. My sex slave,” he said, slapping my ass. “You’re here to please me, not the other way around. Let’s take that gag off and put you to work.”
I was shoved to my knees. When I pitched forward—ow, my nipples!—he caught me by the hair and righted me. He removed the gag but not the clamps or blindfold.
“I want to see you,” I cried.
“Shut the fuck up. You don’t get to see me right now. Nothing I show you is real anyway.” He slapped my cheek. “Open your fucking mouth.”
He drove into my throat until he choked me, and then he stayed there while I coughed and struggled to get away. I couldn’t use my hands to support myself, or seek any leverage. I was powerless, controlled by his palms on either side of my head.
“Just suck me,” he said. “Don’t be all dramatic.”
I tried. I really tried. I drew air through my nose and tried not to throw up as he banged the back of my throat again and again. He gave you an apartment, I told myself. You owe him. But that just made me feel like a whore.
Not a whore. His slave. I felt his hand tug at the collar, circling it, reminding me of my place. The blowjob got easier after that. Be a pretty hole, Chere. Yes, for now I’d be his pretty hole. For the orgasms. For the poetry.
He finished with deep, urgent growls of satisfaction, coming partly in my mouth but partly on my lips, so I had to lick it away.
“Don’t say anything,” he said, letting go of my face. “Don’t say a fucking thing. Sit back on your heels and wait until I’m ready to fuck you again. You’re getting it in the ass next.”
My whole body clenched, imagining him taking my ass in this heightened mood, with all the gear, the blindfold, the collar, the cuffs. At least he took off the clamps. My nipples throbbed as the blood returned, but I couldn’t rub them or soothe them in any way. All I could do was sit there and stroke my thighs with my fingers. If my hands were free, I would have masturbated to orgasm seventeen times in a row without stopping. The fact that I couldn’t touch my clit made me agonizingly aware of how turned on I was. I wondered what he’d do if I started humping the bed, or the floor. I was too scared of him to find out.
I listened as he moved about the room. He poured himself a drink, but I didn’t know what it was. Maybe he’d kiss me and let me taste it on his tongue. I wanted him to kiss me so badly. Somehow I doubted the assfucking would include kissing, but with W, you never knew.
Ten minutes passed. Maybe fifteen. He didn’t need that long to be ready again, although it felt like an eternity to me. I knew he always, always lasted longer the second time, which was a very unfortunate situation for my ass.
There was no warning when it was time to go again. I felt his approach, and wobbled to my feet when he pulled me up. He held the front of the collar to pull me closer. His warmth enfolded me. His bristly cheek pressed against mine.
“Are you ready to bend over and give me your ass, slave girl?”
“Yes, Master,” I said, although I’d never, ever really be ready.
“Do you love it when I take you in the ass?”
“Yes, I love it, Master.” I sounded like I was telling the truth. I think I was telling the truth.
I was turned around and bent over the bed. My hands scrabbled against my thighs as my tender nipples scratched across the comforter. I’m sure it was some very expensive, luxury three-thousand thread count, but it felt like sandpaper against my sensitized skin.
I felt his hand on my cheek, and then the gag. Damn it. I opened up for the hard plastic ball because I didn’t have a choice to refuse it.
“It’s for your own good,” he chided when I whimpered. “You’ll be able to cry and groan as much as you want with the gag on. But no screaming. Good slaves don’t scream.”
Shit. Oh shit. He was only trying to scare me, wasn’t he?
“Spread your legs,” he said, once the ball gag was buckled. He apparently wasn’t happy with my good faith effort to spread them since he yanked them wider, so wide apart that they ached from the stretch. He circled one ankle with rope and fixed it to the bed, then tied my other ankle. I was already moaning in fear, and he hadn’t touched me yet. I was so trapped, and so open.
“You don’t get to close your legs until I’m done with you, so stop squirming. You’re not going anywhere.” He put a hand on the small of my back and slapped the insides of my thighs with sharp, stinging blows. He paused, and then, oh Jesus, he started using that evil stinging whip instead of his hands.
Whack. Oh, the burn.
Whack. Oh, fuck.
Whack. Baby Jesus!
Whack! Oh my God, no…
When the insides of my thighs were alive with stripes of agony, he moved to the backs of my thighs, and it felt ten times worse.
I didn’t scream, no. I couldn’t catch my breath to scream. I panted and trembled and arched against his hand holding me down. I jerked my arms at my sides, and made frantic sobbing sounds in my throat. He moved to my ass, flicking it with blows, one on top of the other. I clenched my ass cheeks, helpless to escape the fiery pain.
“I want to lock you in a dungeon,” he said in a low, dire voice. He paused, and drew the whip up and down my drenched pussy lips. “A real one, not one of those pansy BDSM dungeons. I’d tie you down a thousand different ways and do every hurting thing I could think of to you before I let you go. I’d keep your legs held open with a spreader bar twenty-four hours a day, so I could hurt your pussy and your asshole whenever I felt like it. I’d train you to want it, to beg and plead for sexual pain.”
I shook my head, even though I could absolutely see myself begging. I’d be begging right now, if I weren’t wearing the gag, begging for him to put down the whip and invade my body. I wanted him to take me, to press deep inside me. I didn’t care how much it hurt.
“Please,” I said behind the gag. “Please.”
I wiggled my ass, offering myself for his use. I felt completely submissive, completely needful of him. The collar impeded my breathing just enough to remind me it was there, and that I was his slave.
When I heard the condom, and the cap from the lube, I didn’t brace to resist him. I was scared and I knew it would hurt, but I was ready to be hurt. I wanted to be hurt.
When he took my bound hips and jammed the head of his cock against my sphincter, I was drifting in fantasies of his “real” dungeon, and all the things he might do to me there. I wondered if he had a dungeon somewhere, wherever he lived. I wanted to be in it, experiencing all those scary things he’d said.
His cock pressed into my asshole while I pictured dark walls and racks and bars for torture. I fisted my hands against the stretching, cresting pain of his entry. I knew it would subside in a moment, if I could relax. Relax, relax.
He wasn’t gentle. Thank God for the lube, so when he started fucking my ass in a firm, steady rhythm, I was able to bear it without too much panic. His repetitive thrusting shoved me forward against the bed, and pain mixed with pleasure as my clit rode the sheets. Yes, yes, yes. I squeezed around his cock, seeking my own pleasure in his dominance.
My thighs were killing me, not just because of the whip marks, but from being bound open. I thought of a twenty-four hour spreader bar and shuddered. My asshole hurt with a vivid, blissful kind of pain, with roughness and overstimulation. I whimpered behind the gag and arched my back, tugging at the cuffs that held my arms at my sides.
“What the fuck are you whining about?” he said, sounding more amused than concerned. “You love this, you horny slut.”
It was true. I loved it. I blinked behind my blindfold and struggled anyway, clenching my cheeks as he drilled into my asshole. He added more lube and kept going, smacking my cheeks from time to time, reminding me that I was his slave and that he could fuck my ass for as long as he wanted.
All the while, my clit throbbed with heightening arousal. I wanted so badly to come, but my legs hurt and my jaw hurt, and my ass hurt. He reached beneath me and tweaked my sore nipples, until I groaned behind the gag like an animal. It was like he was doing everything in his power to keep me hurting and crazed and unable to orgasm, but the more he did that, the more needy I became.
My arousal was like the ocean tide, the eddies on the sand, half advancing, half receding, until finally, the part that was advancing was going farther than the part that was receding, and I thought I might be able to come even through the pain. My whole body shuddered in hornified heat. My hips jerked, my shoulders tensed, and my wild pleas warbled through the gag.
“Come on,” he said. “You either come with my cock in your ass, or you don’t come at all. You belong to me. I decide how you come, and how much it hurts.”
And that was it. Those were the words that sent me over the edge, along with his demand and derision, and his beautiful, thrusting, painful length rending my ass for his pleasure. I ground against the bed and squeezed his cock so hard I’m surprised he didn’t smack me for it.
He put a hand around my neck instead, over the collar, and pressed me down, down, down. My orgasm exploded ten-fold after that, so intense it comprised every part of me, my pussy, my clit, my breasts, even my arms and legs and toes. He covered me, driving into me with the last frenetic strokes of his own climax. After one last momentous shudder, he went still.
Both of us were still for long moments. I moved my hand a little, the thigh and wrist cuffs making a chink of a sound.
“Jesus, Chere,” he said. “Fucking hell. Don’t fucking move. Just stay.”
So I stayed in my dark, bound world, waiting for his next command. It seemed like forever before he pulled away from me, but at the same time, it seemed too soon. I didn’t want him to go.
I felt his fingers working at the gag. He took it off and wiped my cheeks and kissed me, hard uncomfortable kisses along the edge of the collar and beneath my ear. I was still so blind and breathless, I hardly heard what he said. “God, that you let me do this,” he murmured. “That you let me do these things to you.”
I turned my head so he could kiss my mouth. “Let me see you,” I begged against his lips.
“No.”
His fingers twisted in my hair. I wished I knew his name. I wished I knew everything about him. I wished I could see the expression that went along with that ragged murmur.
Please, W, I want more of you. I wanted to cry and scream out everything in my heart, but I didn’t dare. My mouth still hurt from the gag. My heart hurt. My ass hurt, though not as much as when he was inside it.
He shifted away with a groan, and released my ankles, and then unbound my wrists and thighs from their connected cuffs. My body felt too free, too exposed now that I wasn’t tied down anymore. I’d become comfortable in the security of bondage, and now that security was gone. I reached to unbuckle the eye mask, but he stopped me. “Not yet,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because I said.”
He lifted me up and I tried to walk, although it was hard. I felt like collapsing into a ball. He led me into the bathroom, from wool carpet onto cool, smooth tile. He propped me against his body and then he took off the leather mask. I flinched as I stared at the two of us in the mirror.
He looked beautiful, stern and tall and sexy, but I looked like hell. My hair was a wreck and my makeup was smeared by drool and tears. My face was crisscrossed with the marks from the gear straps. My dress was nothing but a scrap of fabric down to my waist, with my nipples sticking out. When I tried to look away, he turned my head back.
“Look at yourself,” he said. “Look at what you do for me.” He rested his cheek against mine, and reached to trace the collar with his fingertips. “You’re so beautiful.”
I felt like a failure, because I couldn’t see the beauty. I couldn’t see beauty in anything but him, with his striking features and his muscular physique. And the collar…the collar was beautiful. I was seeing it for the first time, since I’d been blindfolded when he first put it on.
I’d imagined something black and shiny, but it was weathered brown leather, the same tawny brown color as my eyes. I’d imagined lots of metal but there was only the buckle and one single O-ring. So classic and simple, considering all the complex feelings it gave me.
He finally let me turn away from the mirror. I buried my head against his neck but he made me look up at him. I felt crusty and dirty, and whorish in my adulterated dress. He kissed my forehead and my eyes and my neck, and then he released me so he could turn on the shower. He kept hold of one of my hands, like I might run away. Maybe I would have.
“Let’s take the collar off,” he said. “Had you ever worn one before?”
I didn’t know how to answer. Yes, I’d worn them as part of silly sex games, for clients. No, I’d never worn one the way I had today.
“I’ve worn collars a few times,” I said quietly. “But…not like…” I reached for it as he drew it away.
“Do you want to keep it?” he asked.
I blinked at him. “Aren’t we going to use it again?”
He shrugged. “We might. I don’t know. I guess I’ll keep it.”
When we got into the shower, he nudged me under the water first. He watched as I wet my hair, stared as my eyes closed and stared as my eyes opened. His gaze was so intense. He took me in his arms and kissed me, a long, slow kiss unlike any he’d ever given me. I tried not to fall in love. He wasn’t making it easy for me. After a marathon make-out session under the cascading water, we got out and dried off, and wrapped up in the hotel robes.
I knew it was time for him to go, but I didn’t want him to go. I wished he would order food, like last time. I wanted to sit and eat together, and talk like friends, but instead he got dressed and started re-packing the kinky gear into his briefcase. Cuffs, rope, clamps, gag, mask, the beautiful collar. I stared out the window while he moved around the room, because I didn’t want him to leave. When I heard him zip his bag, I turned.
“I’m staying at the apartment now,” I told him. “It’s so beautiful.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
“Simon and I are finished.” He hadn’t asked, and he probably didn’t want to know, but it seemed important to tell him. “We’ve broken up for good. It’s a really good thing, and you helped me make that decision. So thanks.”
He looked uncomfortable. “It would have happened eventually anyway.”
“I guess.”
I knew, I knew he didn’t want me to say any more, but now that I’d started talking, I couldn’t seem to stop all my self-congratulatory bullshit from spilling out. “I’ve been looking into schools. You know, degree programs. I’m going to stop escorting soon, in the next few months, I hope, and go back to school. I’m thinking about a design career, or fashion. Something creative.”
“Hmm.”
“I know I can do it. There are plenty of scholarships out there, and I have money saved up. But I could keep seeing you as long as you liked. I mean, I guess I could. I don’t think Henry would have a problem with it.”
His eyes were so blue when he stared at me. So magnificently blue.
“But even if he did…I don’t know. I wouldn’t charge you. I don’t think he can complain if you and I… I mean… If we were just having sex together, not for money.”
I pulled my robe tighter around me. W tilted his head.
“But that wouldn’t really be a client-customer relationship anymore, would it?” he asked. He touched the tip of one of his fingers, then pinched it, the way he pinched my nipples. “We’d have to figure that out.”
“We could definitely figure things out,” I said too quickly. “And none of this is happening right away. I just wanted you to know that even though my life is going to start changing, things between us don’t have to change. I don’t want them to change. I look forward to our sessions. I mean, I do now. I know we had kind of a…a rocky start, but I really enjoy…now…” Stop babbling. Shut up, shut up.
“I enjoy our sessions too,” he said. “We have fun together.”
“But school, and a better career…it’s good, right?”
“Yes, it’s good,” he agreed with a genuine smile. A small smile, but a genuine one. “I’m sure you’ll be great at anything you pursue.” He finally stopped pinching his finger, and lifted his briefcase. “Are you going to stay here tonight?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” I grinned at him. “I have a really nice place of my own to go to now.”
“Yes, you do.” He walked over and touched my arm, a fleeting caress. “You brought some extra clothes?”
“Yes. I always do, thanks to you and your scissors.”
“Good. Because I’m taking the dress. I doubt you’ll be wearing it again.”
I watched as he crossed the room and picked up the scraps of my bodice and skirt, and shoved them into his briefcase with everything else.
“That was one of my favorites,” I said mournfully. “What are you going to do with it?”
He shook his head. That smile again. “You don’t want to know. Have a good week, starshine.”
He gave me one last kiss, a soft, lingering kiss that ended in a bite. Orgasms, kisses, and…
“Oh.” I stopped him on the way to the door. “Aren’t you going to give me some poetry?”
He looked at me, then dug in his overstuffed briefcase for a pen. “Come here,” he said. He pulled me against his chest, my back to his front, and took my arm. He ran fingers up the pale underside of my forearm, from elbow to wrist.
“I already gave you some poetry,” he said against my ear. “You don’t listen.”
I watched as he wrote. The pen tickled, and sometimes scratched.
Look at what you do for me.
You’re so beautiful.
“That’s nice poetry,” I said when he was done. “I wonder who wrote that.”
“Some self-absorbed, perverted jerk,” he answered, smacking my ass. Even through the fluffy robe, it hurt. He kissed me and departed, leaving the room quiet. Too quiet.
Although the room was luxuriantly gorgeous, I decided not to stay the night, because I’d just sit around missing W. That was one downside of leaving Simon. I had too much time on my hands to daydream and think about impossible things.
I glanced at the words scrawled on my skin. Maybe not so impossible.
Maybe someday he’d tell me his name, when he trusted me better, and knew me better. In the meantime, orgasms and poetry were enough.
I got out my phone to take a picture of my forearm, standing next to the window to find the perfect amount of light. It seemed important to save everything W gave me, to archive it and analyze it. These words would eventually fade, but I’d have a picture to remember.
Poems, pictures, memories.
I wanted so much more.